another, and our system is one of war, of an injurious superiority.
Every child of the Saxon race is educated to wish to be first. It is
our system; and a man comes to measure his greatness by the regrets,
envies, and hatreds of his competitors. But in these new fields there
is room: here are no self-esteems, no exclusions.

I admire great men of all classes, those who stand for facts, and for
thoughts; I like rough and smooth "Scourges of God," and "Darlings of
the human race." I like the first Caesar; and Charles V., of Spain;
and Charles XII., of Sweden; Richard Plantagenet; and Bonaparte, in
France. I applaud a sufficient man, an officer, equal to his office;
captains, ministers, senators. I like a master standing firm on legs
of iron, well-born, rich, handsome, eloquent, loaded with advantages,
drawing all men by fascination into tributaries and supporters of his
power. Sword and staff, or talents sword-like or staff-like, carry on
the work of the world. But I find him greater, when he can abolish
himself, and all heroes, by letting in this element of reason,
irrespective of persons; this subtilizer, and irresistible upward
force, into our thought, destroying individualism; the power so great,
that the potentate is nothing. Then he is a monarch, who gives a
constitution to his people; a pontiff, who preaches the equality of
souls, and releases his servants from their barbarous homages; an
emperor, who can spare his empire.

But I intended to specify, with a little minuteness, two or three
points of service. Nature never spares the opium or nepenthe; but
wherever she mars her creature with some deformity or defect, lays her
poppies plentifully on the bruise, and the sufferer goes joyfully
through life, ignorant of the ruin, and incapable of seeing it, though
all the world point their finger at it every day. The worthless and